Such thing as Love
by witchbitch
Summary: If only love is enough Sasuke. If only love is ever enough. " When everything is destroyed between them, will love be powerful enough to forgive and forget?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Unfortunately (for me, but probably fortunately for M. Kishimoto), Naruto and all the characters are not mine...

Such Thing as Love...

Part 1

"I love you."

The maddening void made by that breeze of whisper which in its glorious anguish could still send a chill right into the marrows of my bone has not been able to rub out the hollow it has made long ago in my heart.

Pain is the blood flowing in me, the flesh of my body and the whiteness of my perseverance. That every time I saw the small cactus I now put outside my casement was rained, I ached. Or in times when I have to open my door and watch him take the weight off his feet under the fortification of dusk in the distant corner of the empty space holding a book he has never, would never, read, I remembered and remembered and remembered, and I ached. And then, he put down his book, pretending to just woken up from a slumber sleep, and came to me with a smile.

And then a chaste kiss would follow a rustle against my hair and a look of utter love that even within the years of our lives I would never been able to put into words.

"I love you."

It was not "Welcome home" or "Were you assigned?" or even a "Goddamn' it Naruto!"

It was always those three words which exasperate me so.

If only love is enough Sasuke. If only love is ever enough…

I could silently hear the rain shaping the earth outside my apartment as I turned off the light and went to sleep with the maddening void and him back on his chair under the protection of dimness and pretending to read a book he would never read.

* * *

The road was winding and long. No, saying that would be an understatement. It has been very painful, both mentally and physically exhausting, and demanding much, much sacrification. Had I relented when doing that? Had I realized that this much will be expected of me when I hit the save-sasuke button? Maybe yes. I had learnt it firsthand that nothing was easy for the likes of me. Saving Sasuke shouldn't be that much of an exception. But then again maybe not. When I strived for Sasuke the very first time, I thought that the matter at hand was simply between Sasuke and Itachi, and then of course between Sasuke and me. But our, or should I say my, problem is like a massive black hole, relentlessly sucking people in, drawing and entwining more problems. I wouldn't possibly know, even in my wildest thoughts about hero and saga and the ninja world, that what started from simple rivalry between Konoha's number one prodigy, Sasuke, and Konoha's number one loudmouthed dreamer will end up sacrificing the lives of people and bringing the daily world as we know it to the harbinger of its destruction. Is it because of who we are? Sasuke and Naruto. The avenger and the demon boy. We being ourselves would never allow a contact be made, let alone something akin to a substantial friendship, brotherhood, and dare I say, love.

Reasoning was not for me. It is something I will never be good at. Thus, at times, oftenly, I didn't need logical reasons. Logic would say that Sasuke is a betrayer. That using my chakra obstinately would shorten my life span. That whatever I'm doing might be useless because Sasuke is, God forsake him, willing to go any length to avenge his brother. But my mind is weak. Such reasoning will never occur to me. Sasuke is more than a rival. He's more than a friend. He's more than a brother. Sasuke is the core of my existence. Through Sasuke, I comprehend, understand, know by heart, what it really means to exist. Because Sasuke simply acknowledges my being. Naruto is here. Naruto is alive. Naruto exists. All because of Sasuke... and losing Sasuke means losing the link of my existence.

Yes, as selfish as it may seem, I needed Sasuke to live on. I needed to grasp tightly on that eternal link that could prove that one Uzumaki Naruto is not a mere demon boy or a loud noise in the crowd, or even a pest to deal with, that Uzumaki Naruto worth something. That much he showed me, and I truly couldn't bear to lose what means so much, too damn much, for me.

I have never even considered twice that he needed to be stronger. I don't care he had to kill Itachi. I couldn't care less that Itachi killed his entire family on the command of Konoha. I dismiss the fact that Sasuke may need to vent out his hatred and avenge on every living being that has put him in such a jumbled mess. All I want is for Sasuke to comeback. To stay right here next to me so I could finally sleep without the feeling of emptiness that shoo away my sleepiness and force my eyes open. To be here in Konoha so that I could see the proof of my existence, the person who defines me. I live Sasuke. I live. And I live like I should live my life for the very first time, Sasuke. I live.

And thus, I went for you. You. You. You. Because without you, I couldn't live.

* * *

I used to wish that I could beat Itachi, to be stronger or at least stand equal with him so that my parents would look at me more. And then I wished that I could be much much stronger than Itachi so I could kill him mercilessly with my own bare hands and rip his heart out and feed it to the dog because God he deserves much worse than that for taking my childhood away and killing everything I have ever known as love. For that wish, I was willing to go any length it required me to, even leaving Konoha and piercing my left hand into the chest of the only person I would call a friend. What was happening on my mind during that time was really uncomprehendable to me until this very day. When I looked at his blue blue eyes filled with such a sudden horror, I freeze. No, I didn't think, or at least I couldn't fully remember thinking of anything. My hand was cold. And when I took it out from his chest, it was still cold.

There was no turning back. It was a decision I had to make even when I know by heart, God forgives me, that I would regret. His chakra expulsion made me mad,throwing all my senses away. It stirred something inside me. The need to feed upon a power so raw was excruciatingly painful that my body was moving on its own accord, and my head far long gone. And so I left him there, perhaps to die if Kakashi hadn't save him. I didn't know what I was thinking back then.

When I saw him again, he still hold such determination in his, damn him, blue blue eyes. Even when I moved to kill him, he merely held my hand and lean in a little as if he needed to savour that it was really me standing in front of him, drawing my sword to make my last move. If there wasn't that stoic boy blocking the way, I wouldn't know what might happen.

No, I know what would happen. Uzumaki Naruto wouldn't be here anymore. He would have died on the hands of Uchiha Sasuke. I still don't know what I was thinking at that time.

I knew he cried. So hard I could hear him in my sleep sometimes. I noticed the desperation in his voice when he begged me to come back. Oh and his blue blue eyes when shaded with tears were awfully destructing. But I couldn't come back. He knew that as well. There was no turning back.

There was no turning back.

Not long after, I wished that I could utterly completely turn Konoha into a debris for making me what I was back then. I don't think I thought that for Naruto Konoha was his everything. The place where all his loved ones live in happiness. I hadn't stop to consider that I would turn Naruto into debris. I really had not.

The result of our tangled fate was the murder of so many people. The destruction of so many things we hold dear, his life and my Naruto. I had made a dent in Naruto that no matter how much I wish and wish and wish all over again could never be mended. We would never be the same Sasuke and Naruto like when we were children with dreams. And when I hold him in my arms, rustle his hair, kiss him chastily in his lips and whisper the words of love in his ears, I know to the very extent how destroyed he truly is. And now I silently wish and pray to whatever God there is out there to turn back the time we have lost.

My hand which pierced Naruto on the chest, which draw my sword to kill him, which decided to destroy him to pieces, is still so cold.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: not mine.... -sigh-

Such Thing as Love

Part 2

My heart was bruised, is still bruised because if it is was then the pain might subside a little, but the pain was as strong as when it was bruised for the first time and I could not bring myself to use is because it felt like it is was, not because it had subside but because it still felt like was, the pain had never subsided, and so my heart was bruised. Maybe it was a territory meant to not be healed, to not be filled with such thing, with anything. Maybe I had already made peace with whatever feelings came rushing down on me, imprisoning me in its blissful occurrences of strains and demands, that every time I thought I could not breath or swallow the bitter taste in my mouth I would smile instead. I wonder how long it has been – finding myself unable to either bathe in delight or drown in grief. I have always been, that is if my memory hasn't fooled me, empty. I was an empty child looking for meanings, of life of loneliness of abandonment of love.

If I were not empty, maybe my memories would be filled with nights of drenching my bed with tears or searching for a shape that could cure the swelling in my stomach every time I saw a family. But my memories were filled with nights of stargazing and moon gazing instead. I learnt that lonely means you have no one around you, no one to recognize your existence, and then I learnt that loneliness is one form of abandonment conducted by the good society. Not long after I learnt that there was no love in loneliness and abandonment. That was my life. I made peace with it.

I was an empty child learning that silence was probably not well accepted in the society. Thus, I tried to cure the silence, denying myself for the fondness I have for silence. If I were to say who my first companion was, then silence is. It was comforting like a mother's womb I had never known, cradling me to sleep with its idiosyncratic console - quiet, and assuring with its soft-touching lullaby.

But I was just a betrayer after all. I forgot silence instantly. Like it had never been in my days before. I grew fond of noise. It was lively, vivid, and compelling. It was life. Life, alive, and life. It was everything I saw in the world outside my windowpane. So I laid silence in a pot, put a cactus above it, and left it in the far corner of my room.

Noise brought strange feelings in. The kind of feelings I didn't know I had in me. The kind of feelings that for once made me thought that I wasn't empty. That I was able to be filled with such things, with anything. And there was Sasuke. Ah yes, Sasuke.

He was what the whispering noise of the mothers on the corner of the playground brought to my life along with the outlandish feelings of sorrow and grief mixed with gleam and delight. Sasuke. Lived. Orphan. Alone.

Alone. Alone. Alone. Me. Me. Me. Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasuke.

Before I knew it, I had chanted his names like a mantra.

The mothers had gone home that afternoon, with their children safely tucked beside them and their hands holding in what I could only assume as bonds. A smile unconsciously crept up to my face. I hadn't even realized I was smiling until I felt my face contracted and my lips dried. I now have a bond. For the first time in my life, I knew how magically it felt like when I could identify myself with something other than abstract feelings and concepts of loneliness and abandonment.

That was the very first time, the very first day, I finally managed to identify myself with someone – a living person. Sasuke. And on that dilapidated swing, I sat alone, looking at the sunset, and cried like I had never been before...

My first bond. Or should I say my first one-sided bond, because it was years years later that we truly shared that bond – ironically on the day he decided to sever what I later knew was actually not only an important bond but was also the thread of my life.

Sasuke was silence and noise at the same time. He was never a man of words. A 'hn' out of him was such a worth-to-be-celebrated accomplishment. But underneath his silence I could hear the raging noise of storms and thunder of his mute emotion.

I wondered if I should have said to him that I could hear it – the rampaging sentiment residing dangerously within him. If I said that years ago, maybe he would not leave. If I said that I had wanted to be him, wanted to know him more, wanted to make my bond with him whole, would I be the redeeming force which could make him stay? I had no possession of the answer. And he left, and he left me, and he left me with only the niggling enquiries.

And on those silent nights when I was not in good terms with sleep and drown myself in deep contemplation, I had found out one quite drastically interesting fact. I was, perhaps still am, as psychically disturbed as him. It was lying consciously in his lifetime pursue over his brother, and subtlety in my devoted pursue over him. My life was ironically swirled around Sasuke the way his swirled around his brother.

But how could I not? Sasuke changed everything in me. I was no longer empty. It was actually silly because he didn't do anything for me. He didn't even spare me a glance but he made me strived harder. Made me wanted to dream big things. Made me never wanted to give up. He invoked my strength – all that is in me. He did everything for me. He created the Uzumaki Naruto people came to know.

And when he went away, I realized he brought with him my securities. I became as dangerous and unstable as he was with the murdering of his family and his faithful vengeance for Itachi.

I was empty again. Like I was before that time in the playground when the mothers brought Sasuke to me. I was empty without Sasuke.

And with my simple mind, I naively thought that if he came back, I would be whole again.

Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasuke. I had never known I could be so wrong.

* * *

Seven years, three months, and nineteen days. Four meetings. One, he was severely wounded that Kakashi needed to rush him to the hospital, or so what an Anbu later told me when he peculiarly wanted to be all friendly with me during a mission. Second, I believed I had created another whole in his heart that hasn't yet healed after those three years. Third, there was still that strong determination in the richest shade of blue of his undying eyes, even when he saw me with the Akatsuki cloak hugging my body. Perhaps I hate those determinations he possessed, or maybe it was his calming and free from all judging blue blue eyes that I hate, because I suddenly needed to hurt him again. This time not only with my hands, but with the hatred I breed toward Konoha and how I wanted to reduce it into nothingness. I knew Pain had already done the task, and getting himself caught in the process. Naruto was never a murderer. It was not Konoha as a place with its glorious buildings I wanted to destroy; for they could build it again and again. But it was Konoha as system – it was the space called Konoha I needed to annihilate so that no one would ever remember again the name or the fact that it was once existed.

He was confused then, so I fulfilled him with the honest truth of how ugly Konoha was. That my family was slaughtered under Konoha's command. That Itachi was utterly corrupted by Konoha. And I wanted Konoha to end.

The place he adored so much turned out to have such blaspheming and desecrating past. And he, with all those determination he has, could never change the past.

Then he screamed of the things he would do like he did for Neji when we were just children. I was quite tempted, not because I wanted to come back to Konoha, but because I wanted to see how far he would do things for me. Desperation was obvious in his voice though. It might have been quite weird, because I could faintly remember that I had almost think he was beyond exhausted, mentally, even though that gleam in his eyes still shine through and through.

And then he looked at me so sadly, I didn't know exactly what caused it. Was it me? Because he still couldn't convince me, change me? Or was it because he felt played by the fate who had tossed him around like a wrecked toy?

I remembered thinking at that time who was more damaged, me or him. But I hadn't thought much again, and we fought like we always did. He hadn't seemed so vigorous after, moving only based on mere instinct. If Neji and Shikamaru hadn't showed up, I might have killed him.

Yes, I might have killed him. I wonder how different everything would be if I had killed him that time. Perhaps he would finally be freed, in peace at last. Perhaps it would be better.

The fourth, he was quite dulled. Still loud like always, but he was visibly cracked like a broken mirror glued together. I knew him so well after all.

And when I didn't say anything to comment on his I-had-rebuilt-a-new-Konoha because I heard the silent 'for you' spoken by his eyes, he shockingly smiled earnestly instead. I had never seen him smile like that before. He always grinned or laughed ugly with his teeth and gums visible for the entire village to see. But he smiled. And I knew in that smile he said, 'I had no strength left to go on.'

I suppressed the disturbing and sudden urged to spill tears and sob. It didn't even last for several seconds, still, all purpose I thought I have, the resolutions I thought I believed, were blown away by the breeze that came along with his smile.

I should have known long ago, long long time ago, that he had knitted our bond so closely together with his every determination, perseverance, and perhaps love it was impossible to be severed after all. He has that unique power over me, and of course over almost every living person he came across.

My eyes conceivably softened because he looked at me disbelievingly. Just out of curiosity, I tried to do something I thought I had long forgotten how, and definitely to know his reaction. I smiled, to him, for him, sincerely. Oddly, I was sad when I realized it was the first time I smiled this sincere for anyone after my family was lost.

He broke down to his knees and sobbed.

All your burning years Naruto, all your heart-rending years...

After seven years, three months and nineteen days of horrendously long and agonizing time, both for me and him, I came back. I came back. And strangely not to Konoha like what he always wanted me to do, but to the one person I wish I could patch up the past with.

It was already too late, wasn't it Naruto? You are far too broken and I was far too guilty.

Is it really too late...


End file.
